About beverly Penn
For more than twenty years, award-winning Austin artist Beverly Penn has exhibited her cast bronze sculptures extensively in galleries, museums, and public settings. Her pieces have appeared in venues across Texas, in Arlington, Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Galveston, Houston, and San Antonio, and throughout the United States in New York, Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Memphis, Miami, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Raleigh, Santa Fe, and Washington, D.C., among many others.
Beverly Penn’s works exhibit an impulse to control, contain, order, and organize. She transforms invasive species, specifically weeds, by casting them in bronze. Penn skillfully captures the distinctive curls and shapes of these weeds, using the resulting cast-bronze pieces to craft expansive wall sculptures.
In her sculptures, the once-untamed plants become suspended in time, frozen in their unruly forms. This deliberate act allows viewers to contemplate the artist’s mastery over the structured patterns and imposed arrangements adorning the wall. Upon deeper reflection, one is prompted to ponder the broader implications of exerting control over nature. The ongoing struggle between humanity and the natural world emerges as a source of innovation, albeit often accompanied by environmental costs. Beverly Penn’s work serves as a thought-provoking exploration of this intricate relationship.
Penn’s work has appeared in such publications as Art in America, Art Lies, Metalsmith, New Art Examiner, Sculpture magazine, and the New Orleans Art Review. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including a Rockefeller Foundation residency in Bellagio, Italy; a Connemara Conservancy Artist Grant; grants from the Texas Commission on the Arts; and a Fulbright Fellowship in Barcelona, Spain. The Texas Legislature and Texas Commission on the Arts recently named Penn the State of Texas 3D Artist for 2017.
Penn’s sculptures are included in the collections of the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York City, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Austin Museum of Art, the El Paso Museum of Art, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. She has been commissioned for several public art projects, including Unity in Diversity in Las Cruces, New Mexico; the Community Core Sample Project and the Threshold Project with Steve Wiman in Austin; and the Hilton Hotel in San Diego.
Beverly Penn earned her MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz, her MA from New Mexico State University, and her BFA from the University of Texas at El Paso. She currently serves as a tenured professor in the School of Art and Design at Texas State University in San Marcos.